This site and our podcast are free to use and listen to respectively. Though there are costs involved in maintaining and producing both. If you like, please make a donation to help offset these costs and to help ensure that we can continue to bring you both. Thank you so much.

You can make a one time donation of any amount you like using the above "Donate" button. If you rather make an annual recurring donation of $25 (that is less than 50 cents a week), use the "Subscribe" button below.

Okay so my reassement of this is a lot higher I'd say. It's very entertaining.

What, however, was that silly plan with the rock mining cart, to be? I mean they do indeed find a way into the Oracle but the first attempt was a miserable failure...and the cliffhanger was quite...confusing. We didn't see where the rocks really go, nor do we know that the pit is a threat to the Doc and Leela if they fall down it, nor do we see the Doc and Leela get into the cart, they're just there. A very uneven sequence.

Other bad stuff: just why, though, does a sword fit the key to the Oracle? Also, even the Doctor says this is another mad computer just like FACE OF EVIL and what's with DW's mad obsession with sacrificial ceremonies from the first story (UNEARTHLY CHILD) onward? That said, I'm glad Herrick didn't die and glad of the connection to Ulysseus, even if the Doc doesn't comment that he was there, chances being the writers didn't realize that the First Doctor was involved.

In any event, Tom Baker is marvelous in this. In every scene. His "No hard feelings" on departing the Oracle's room after telling it/her (female voice I think) is very funny. His passioned plea to Jackson about taking Jackon's own people off the planet and on the ship is well done. The Doctor's very much a leader here. But he's also quite funny. If this were not Tom Baker, this story would be very wooden indeed. Just as Hartnell cheered up The Savages, Troughton made the Abominable Snowman, Pertwee enlivened Planet of the Spiders and just about everything else he was in, Tom makes this story hold together and very watchable.

Fan ceremony be darned, this story is quite entertaining and is far above ANDROID INVASION and INVISIBLE ENEMY. And I love the last scene. Leela is just great! So is K9. The show is very comfortable at this stage and deserves to be. That's to change with the next story, of course...